Copyright Infringement

The University of Southern Indiana is taking a proactive approach to protect you from violating copyright infringement laws and violating the Student Code of Conduct and IT Acceptable Use Policy. In addition, USI must comply with the Higher Education Opportunity Act (a government regulation designed to provide students aid and to protect students' rights) which states that educational institutions must “effectively combat” the use of their networks for illegal use of copyrighted material.

To comply with the Higher Education Opportunity Act, USI has elected to implement a 'point system' that allows legal use of peer to peer (P2P), while detecting attempts to obtain copyrighted content. It accomplishes this by informing the user and redirecting the web browser to a site that explains the violation in detail and prevents internet connectivity for a period of time. This period of time increases with increased numbers of violations.

Level

Point Total

End Sanction

1

10

Immediately (can take up to 15 minutes)

2

20

2 hours

3

30

48 hours

4

40

Indefinitely - Student Code of Conduct Violation

Point values are based off of several categories, including:•Exchange of Registered Copyrighted Content•Exchange of Commercial Music•Exchange of Commercial Film and TV•Exchange of Commercial Software•Exchange of Commercial eBooks•Exchange of Commercial Games•Use of Evasive P2P Client•Use of Aggressive P2P Client

For more information on the use of Evasive and Aggressive P2P clients please see this page: P2P.